32 I FelJi'iiary, 



Jimits th.it it could serve no useful purpose to describe each of the 

 eight or nine species separately, for it would merely be a case of "a 

 little more " here, or " a little less " there. Nevertheless, they are to 

 some extent distinguishable, and it would be strange were it otherwise. 

 I fancy I could always pick out sorhi and oxyacanthcd from among 

 their congeners (leaving out of account the continental cydoniella, 

 which I have not seen). They are the most colourless of the lot ; in 

 both the ground colour is pale yellow, the head very pale grey, the 

 thoracic plate untinged with grey, and the legs unspotted. I well 

 remember Mr. Bankes sending me a supply of his pear mines in the 

 autumn of 1895. On opening some of them I came upon one larva 

 which I felt confident from its general pallor was that of oxyacanthod, 

 and the opinion was amply confirmed the following spring, when 

 among a fine series of fyrivorella there emerged a few undoubted 

 oxyacanthce, as ascertained from the male genitalia. Mr. Bankes tells 

 me that Frey, treating of oxyacanthce, describes a very different 

 larva, he says : " The head is distinctly heart-shaped, black, com- 

 paratively large. The colour of the body is dirty white, lighter on 

 the last two segments. On the 2nd segment there is a black spot, 

 shining, and divided by a pale line. The alimentary canal is visible, 

 and appears brownish, and the true legs are black." Surely some 

 error must have cre|)t in here, the larva of Ornix anglicella having 

 been mistaken for that of the LithocoUetis. If the two species just 

 mentioned are the palest, cerasicoleUa, on the other hand, is the most 

 highly coloured form ; the head is black, the plate dark grey, almost 

 blackish, the legs distinctly spotted, and the ground-colour yellow. 

 Spinicolella is very similar, but the shade of black as a rule is not 

 quite so deep. The special character of mespilella and pyrivorella is 

 the contrast in colour between the fore-part of the body and the hind- 

 part, the thorax being white and the abdomen yello^^^ The head is 

 blackish, the plate grey, and the legs spotted, but the colouring is 

 usually some shades lighter than in the corresponding parts of spini- 

 colella and cerasicoleUa. Between the two species themselves I can see 

 no difference. Concomitella and hlancardella, the apple species, are 

 also indistinguishable from each other. In the colour of their heads 

 and plates they are lighter than the mespilella pair ; the legs are 

 only faintly spotted, occasionally even unspotted. Their distinctive 

 character is a tinge of orange in the ground-colour, though I have 

 seen the same kind of tint in mespilella when feeding in a yellowing 

 leaf of Pyrus torminalis. The ground-colour is probably given by the 

 fat-masses, and these are influenced to some extent by the food. An 



